


the candy hearts in my mind

by luninosity



Category: Actor RPF, Captain America (Movies) RPF, Marvel Cinematic Universe RPF
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Dom/sub Undertones, Drunken Confessions, First Kiss, Love Confessions, M/M, Salt Lake Comic-Con, True Love, more like tipsy confessions really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-01
Updated: 2015-10-01
Packaged: 2018-04-24 08:23:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4912273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I want a lightsaber,” Sebastian says. Chris’s pencil pauses in between idle sketches of the night and the fans in costume and something Sebastian can’t quite see in the corner of hotel-branded notepaper. “Not at all surprised. How’re you feeling?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	the candy hearts in my mind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ninemoons42](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/gifts).



> Birthday fic for a lovely friend! Only a couple days late this time! *hearts*
> 
> Title from Green Day's "Hearts Collide," for obvious reasons.
> 
> The world needed fic to cope with everything we learned from SLCC 2015, namely that Sebastian Stan:  
> -has always been a writer and is taking creative writing classes  
> -will sing Green Day and Pink Floyd at the drop of a hat  
> -is a Star Wars fan  
> -can charm a roomful of fans with humor and enthusiasm and adorableness, and yet will turn into a ball of bashful shy sweetness when Chris Evans appears  
> -is mentioned in people's tweets with commentary like "buying Sebastian Stan drinks while sharing laughs with Chris Evans!" which naturally begs the question of how Chris feels about this situation
> 
> ...so I had to, really.

“I want a lightsaber,” Sebastian says. He’s lying on his back on his hotel bed, legs dangling off the side, shoes kicked off too. The bed’s pillow-topped and extraordinarily comfortable. The ceiling’s calm and pale and only spinning a little.  
  
Chris’s pencil pauses. Chris is sitting beside him, not quite touching, watching with some concern in between idle sketches of the night and the fans in costume and something Sebastian can’t quite see in the corner of hotel-branded notepaper. “Not at _all_ surprised. How’re you feeling?”  
  
“I’m not that drunk.” He waves a hand. His whole body aches with loneliness: the kind of loneliness that comes with the knowledge that Chris is right there and—being a friend. Chris is a good friend. A superhero.   
  
He adds, “A blue one. Lightsaber.”  
  
“It’ll match, like, ninety percent of your wardrobe. How many drinks did you let him buy you?”  
  
Too many. But the man’d had compassionate eyes, had smiled at him, and Chris hadn’t been joining in; Chris had been mature and sober and genuine and beautiful, laughing at the journalist’s jokes and Sebastian’s jokes equally. All friends. All sharing the night together.  
  
“I don’t know,” he admits, in belated answer.  
  
Chris’s mouth does something. A flinch. A line. Disapproval. Sebastian stretches his hand that way, wanting to smooth the line away, but thinks better of touching. Chris doesn’t want to touch him.  
  
He flops the hand across his own stomach instead. Ow. “I’m okay. ’M sorry.”  
  
“For what?” Back to not looking up, not looking at him. Pencil-sketches and art, while Sebastian lets strange journalists buy him excessively strong cocktails in hotel bars.  
  
“I’d stay longer,” he answers, avoiding the exact question, “if I could. But I will. Stay. As long as I can. Your panel tomorrow. I’ll be backstage.” It’s important that Chris knows. Chris and Chris’s anxiety need to know. They need to believe that Sebastian’d take away and carry every last ounce of crowd-related stress and tension if he could. “I promise.”  
  
Another pause. “I know.”  
  
“Wish I didn’t have to fly out. Timing…” He waves the hand again. It behaves more this time. “I want you to know I’m here.” Please know that. Please always know that, you can call me whenever, you can ask me to stay, I’ll stay, I’ll kneel at your feet and kiss your fingertips and be your knight if you’ll only ask.  
  
Chris finally looks at him, pencil arrested above paper. “I know.”  
  
You know I love you? No; and he catches those words before they can bleed across the night. Chris has gone on talking. “—and you know I appreciate that. I mean. I know you’d stay. You can’t miss your premiere. But it’s—I know you mean it. Thanks.”  
  
Sebastian closes his eyes. The unrequested gratitude plummets like lead into his bones. He’s all at once very tired, sinking into the arms of the bed because lead would naturally do that. Into darkness like the deadening silence under thick winter snow.  
  
“Hey.” Chris’s hand lands on his shoulder. Shaking him. Worry in Boston harbors, unsettled seas. “Nope, come on, stay awake. Stay with—talk to me. I never knew you were a writer.”  
  
He opens his eyes. Confers with the nice cool ceiling. Less painful than sneaking a peek at Chris’s face. “I always have been. Ever since I was a kid.”  
  
“So what kind of things do you write?” Chris clearly wants him to talk. To stay lucid. To not be a problem that’ll need solving.   
  
Which of course means it’s not about actual interest in whatever he comes up with as a reply. Obviously. Stupid hope, perking right up when it knows better. “Still not drunk enough to tell you about the ill-advised Star Wars fan fiction.”  
  
“Really?”  
  
“These days…mostly science fiction, some…creative non-fiction…short stories, I don’t have the time for a novel…it’s because of you. Why.”  
  
“…what?”  
  
This time he does find Chris’s eyes; they’re leaning in, surprisingly close, intent. The hand’s remained on Sebastian’s shoulder: plainly forgotten there. “You. Being a director. Your dream. I thought—maybe I could. Watching you.”  
  
Chris’s lips part: open, astonished. “That—I don’t even know what to say.”  
  
“No,” Sebastian hurriedly explains, “I didn’t say it to—to make you have to say anything.”  
  
Chris makes a soft gutpunched sound. Takes the hand away from Sebastian’s shoulder. Rubs it over his eyes. Those eyes must be tired; it’s late and Chris has been taking care of him for most of the night. Because Sebastian’s a terrible person, and can’t even be there for Chris properly when Chris needs him to be the strong charming dragon-facing one.  
  
“You don’t have to stay,” he tries, in case that’ll make Chris’s face happier again, one less burden. “I swear I’m fine. You should sleep.”  
  
“I don’t think,” Chris says carefully, “that you should be alone. What if you, like, pass out and die from alcohol poisoning? Tell me about your lightsaber.”  
  
“Extendable blade. Firm grip. I said blue. I’m not going to pass out and die. I’m not even dizzy. Much.” His hair’s in his face, though. When’d that happened? He sticks out his tongue, which only gets the hair more attached to his mouth.  
  
Chris laughs, which is very unfair and very warm and cozy, and reaches over.  
  
Sebastian’s brain completely shuts off at the first touch. At the second _before_ the touch, as his skin yearns toward big kind heat.  
  
Chris doesn’t move away immediately, either. Leaves the hand there: playing with too-long strands and Sebastian’s soul.  
  
“I kinda like your hair,” Chris murmurs, “like this, it suits you,” and of course Chris means that from an artistic sensibility, judging balance and softness and lines, or that would be the rational explanation.   
  
But rationality’s departed the premises, and the combination of words and idle petting hits the tipping point: Sebastian turns his head and kisses the base of Chris’s thumb.  
  
The world crystallizes. Snapshot of cataclysm in a Salt Lake City hotel room.  
  
“Oh fuck—” Sebastian breathes, and throws himself to his feet and runs for the relative safety of the bathroom.  
  
He slams the door. Slides downward into a heap of legs and misery, leaning against it. He’s not bothered to hit the light-switch, and the sink and towel-rack become large and unknowable in the windowless space. They loom in eerie shades of despair.  
  
Oh no. No. He wraps arms around a knee—the other leg’s ended up folded beneath him. He rests his head on that knee, leans into bone, relishes the dull distant pain. Echoed in his heart, his stomach, his entire body.  
  
His skin, which has clung to the sensation of Chris’s warmth, hurts worst of all. He might throw up. The vodka isn’t helping, though it’s not the cause.  
  
He’s not even that drunk. He’d been telling the truth. He’d just—  
  
He’d felt so good, Chris had felt so good beside him, and he’d _wanted_ —  
  
Chris’ll leave now. That’s got to be the outcome: Chris will leave and get some much-needed rest and chalk this up to drunken sloppiness and never think of it or him again—  
  
Knocking. Loud. Behind his head. “Sebastian?”  
  
No, no. Please. Please just let everything stop. Every story he’s ever made up for himself, laughing at himself: foolish daydreams shattering apart, and he’s still got hair in his eyes.  
  
“Sebastian!” The doorknob shakes. It’s not locked, but his weight’s in the way.   
  
“Sebastian,” Chris pleads, voice gone taut. “Are you there? Are you awake? Say something—fuck, come on, say something—”  
  
He tries. He really does. He doesn’t want Chris to be scared. But he doesn’t have any words lined up, and sudden heat prickles behind his eyes, drowning any sound.  
  
“Please,” Chris is begging him, “please, don’t be hurt—say something if you can, I—I need to come in there, if you can’t answer, if you, like, hit your head or—Sebastian, _please_ —”  
  
He hauls his protesting heavy self away from the door. The tile floor’s cold even through jeans. He deserves that. “It’s open.”  
  
Captain America muscles and desperate resolve dive through and flail at the light-switch and land at his side. Hands search his face, lift his chin; eyes roam over him, checking for bruises or blood. “Jesus fucking Christ. Don’t ever do that again.”  
  
“I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—” Because Chris appears confused, he clarifies. “I won’t. I’m professional. I can _be_ professional. It doesn’t—I won’t let it get in the way.”  
  
_“What?”_  
  
“What?”  
  
“Wait,” Chris says, “what’re you—you think we’re talking about when you _kissed_ me?”  
  
“…yes?”  
  
“Jesus,” Chris says again, collapsing next to him on the floor. “No. We’re talking about you being too drunk to walk straight, running away from me, locking yourself in the bathroom and not fucking answering for _five fucking minutes_ while I’m shouting your name. Don’t. Never again.”  
  
Sebastian, sitting on the floor under the towel rack, stares at him.   
  
Chris grabs his hand. Hard. Tight enough to hurt. “I was about to break your goddamn bathroom door down. I’m _here_. I’m here because I want to take care of you.”  
  
“Here. On the floor.”  
  
“Here next to you.”  
  
“I’m sorry about—”  
  
“Stop.” Chris squeezes his hand. “ _Stop_. Sebastian. You—” An exhale. A headshake. “Okay. We're doing this. Okay. Um. I said I like your hair.”  
  
“Yes, you said, because you like drawing and it’s something different—”  
  
“What? No!” Chris jostles him with a shoulder: half affectionate, half annoyed. “I was drawing you as a Jedi, yeah, but I didn’t _say_ that, that’s not why. What the hell’s even going _on_ in your head, please tell me, seriously.”  
  
Sebastian, who’s equally baffled, shrugs. A hand-towel plops off the rack, dislodged by the general bewilderment, and lands on his shoulder.  
  
“I like your hair.” Chris plucks the towel off his shoulder. A bit of white lint flutters in the wake, bereft. The towel itself gets tossed at the counter near the sink, where it lands securely and settles in to spectate. “I like your muscles. I like—when we first met you were all, I don’t know, cute and shy and sweet, and now you look like you could bench-press _me_ and you’ll sing Green Day in a convention hall, and I. Don’t know how to. You’re you.”  
  
“But—”  
  
“And I’m still that guy who can’t get through a single panel without friends showin’ up to help.”  
  
“Chris—”  
  
“And then sometimes,” Chris says over him, which is just as well because Sebastian’s got no clue where his own interjection would’ve gone, “sometimes you look at me like—like you did today a couple times, like you’re still that kid, all…shy and happy and polite, or something, and it just fuckin’…rips my heart in two, because you can charm a whole fucking convention off their feet and then you look at me like that, and you tell me you’re fucking _inspired_ by me. I don’t want you to be inspired by me, I just want to, like, pin you against the closest wall and kiss you until you can’t remember your name.”  
  
“Chris,” Sebastian whispers. Shock like hummingbird wings beating wildly, like astonishment caught in his throat, on his lips. He’s not sure he’s in fact made a sound.  
  
Chris sighs, deflates, scrubs a hand across his face, through his hair. His other hand’s still holding Sebastian’s, on the floor between them. “It’s late and you’re drunk and I’m guessin’ you won’t remember this anyway and I don’t even have muscle anymore and you let guys in bars buy you drinks when I’m right there and you don’t know how much it means, what you said, that you’d be there for me. Never mind. Can we get you to bed?”  
  
“I keep telling you,” Sebastian says, “I’m not that drunk.”  
  
This time Chris is the one who ends up speechless.  
  
“I kissed you because I wanted to,” Sebastian says, “because I’ve always wanted to, for years I’ve wanted to. And also I can out-drink you. And also I only let him buy me drinks because I wanted you to _want_ to kiss me.”  
  
“Right,” Chris says slowly, “logical.”  
  
“Shut up and kiss me. I mean. Please?”  
  
“Hey,” Chris observes, amused, “still so sweet, so polite, didn’t I say you were—” and then _is_ kissing him: hot and beard-scratchy and firm and delicious as they sit on the hotel bathroom floor.  
  
Chris kisses like all and none of Sebastian’s best idle imaginings. Chris kisses gently but with no doubt about who’s in control, tongue and lips and teeth laying wonderful inexorable claim to Sebastian’s mouth. Chris’s tongue teases his, Chris’s teeth catch his lower lip and nibble, Chris’s hands reach for him and cradle his head, and Sebastian moans softly and melts into the hold, letting Chris have every piece of him.   
  
He’s Chris’s, he’s always been Chris’s, from the beginning. His body knows, and yields readily so that Chris can also know.  
  
Chris pulls back, lips wet and pink, eyes brilliant. “You taste so fucking good. I mean, kinda like vodka and chocolate, but. So good.” His hands’re roving through Sebastian’s hair: tugging lightly, stroking, sneaking down to slide fingers under his chin to coax another kiss.  
  
“You do inspire me,” Sebastian says a little dreamily. “To be good.”  
  
“Oh, that’s gonna be a thing, huh?” Chris laughs, sounding breathless and half-drunk himself, trailing kisses down from Sebastian’s lips, along his jaw, his throat. “Guess I’ll just have to work on inspiring you more.”  
  
“Yes, please. I love you with or without the superhero muscle, you know.”  
  
Chris goes absolutely motionless. Gazing at him. Hands still cupping his face, nose bumping his.  
  
“Because you said you didn’t have as much muscle, because you were cutting weight, you said, for your next role. But that’s not why I— _oh_.”  
  
“You love me.”  
  
“I’m sorry I locked myself in the bathroom and scared you.”  
  
“You _love_ me.”  
  
“Since the first day we met. On this bathroom floor. When you pretend to behead me with a toy lightsaber around journalists with cameras. I love you.”  
  
“I love you,” Chris says, diving in for another kiss, for multiple kisses, punctuating words. “With or without superhero muscle. I love that you can sing Green Day _and_ Pink Floyd. I love that you’re some kind of secret writer genius. Please don’t ever hide from me again, even if you’re mad at me, which you totally will be sometimes, ’cause I’m kind of a moron. You said you wanted to be good for me. I’m asking. Please.”  
  
“If I’m upset with you I’ll tell you, and I’m not a genius, and I love you, and yes.” He leans in to kiss Chris, this time: initiation, and certainty. “I’m yours. I’ll be good for you. I’ve always wanted to be. For you.”  
  
“Yeah?” Chris touches a fingertip to Sebastian’s lips: index finger, curious and possessive and excited. Sebastian kisses it. “Yeah. So if I want to get you off this bathroom floor and into bed…”  
  
“I can be _very_ good for you in bed.”  
  
“…and tomorrow.” They’re getting up; Chris stops, so Sebastian does too, awkward as his legs unfold, awkward as future distance intrudes.   
  
Not a story. Reality. Containing stumbles and poorly timed premieres.   
  
But Chris’s eyes are level and true, and Chris’s arms’re around him, so he’s unafraid.   
  
“Tomorrow,” Chris repeats, having decided, “you’ll be backstage, and I’ll duck out early—no one’s gonna care, they’re getting Mackie and Hayley, they won’t even miss me—and I’ll come with you to the airport and then come back. Maybe buy you a lightsaber on the way. Blue. I remember. And you’ll call me from New York.”  
  
That future unspools, lying beyond the bathroom doorway. Physical distance, the demands of mutual careers; never apart, never a day alone. Together through plane flights and shining superhero years. The way his mouth tingles with the memory of Chris’s fingertip pressing lightly down.  
  
“The second I land,” he says, safe in Chris’s arms, lamplit bed beckoning across the room, “yes.”  
 


End file.
